Hi. Uh this is another chapter and I hope you guys like it…I tried to make it good, I really did guys T.T inform me of your thoughts via a review.
Also I made Jack a total BAMF and like super ninja. Before you guys totally complain about it I would like to remind you we know literally nothing of his past and because this is my story I get total rights to making it up so… yeah thanks
Disclaimer: I Do Not Own.
Horsemen
"Come in," Daniel said without rolling over in his bed after a short three raps on his door woke him from his light dozing.
"Hey," Henley said quietly. She walked into the small bedroom holding an icepack and a relieved look on her face.
"Thanks," Daniel sighed as he reached for the icepack to replace the lukewarm one that sat on his bedside table. Jack had gotten him pretty good and he was developing a nice bruise on his cheekbone. Luckily enough he had turned away from the punch that would have landed him with a black eye and iced it soon enough that it wasn't turning the fun colors his cheek was. His stomach was still a little tender from the kick that had dropped him to the ground but he was otherwise unscathed. They had all known the kid was a talented fighter – why else would they leave the kid alone in that apartment to fight Dylan? – but Daniel was still surprised when he was on the receiving end of those fists.
"You look pitiful, Atlas," Henley said as she gracefully eased herself onto the edge of the bed.
Daniel gave her a withering look but it was only halfhearted and said, "Did you have your conversation with Jack?"
Henley growled and blew her red hair out of her face saying, "It would be a stretch to call it a conversation: I just lectured and he gave me puppy dog eyes. How was I supposed to keep yelling at him when he does that to me?"
Daniel laughed, the kid sure had Henley wrapped around his finger. "I suppose you don't."
"Well, since it was a first time offence I guess I can let it go this time," Henley continued with a small grin.
Daniel gave Henley a sidelong glance – Merritt hadn't informed her? Well he certainly wouldn't be keeping the kids' secrets, "Henley, you know the kid –"
Just then his cellphone started playing Law and Order's theme song – Dylan's ringtone.
"Hold on, just a sec – " Daniel said, searching for his phone in the mess that resembled the things known as 'beds'. "Dylan?" he said as soon as he found it.
"Daniel – you guys need to leave. Like right now," Dylan said in place of a greeting.
"Right now?" Daniel asked immediately and without question. "How far away are they?"
"They're already there. They're going to storm the place in twenty five minutes."
Daniel relayed the message to Henley who cursed loudly and ran out the room to tell the others, "A sooner warning would have been appreciated, man."
"I just found out myself, ok? Just hurry up. Only take the essentials with you."
"Where should we go?" Daniel asked, grabbing his jacket and pulling on thick socks and his shoes.
"If you can get to the car start driving towards New York. If you can't just get out of there. Stay together!"
"Ok can do. I'll call as soon as I can," Daniel said as he ran down to the living room where Henley was throwing things in a bag and shouting at Merritt to get moving.
"Goodbye, Daniel."
…
"Jack," Henley said as she shook his shoulder. He had gone straight to sleep after their talk and now she had to bring him back to the land of the living to go on the run with a raging hangover. "Jack, get up. We have to go now."
Jack rolled over in his bed and ignored the urgent magician shaking him awake.
"Jack, I'm not kidding! The FBI are going to be here in twenty minutes!" Henley said desperately as she shook him harder.
Jack's eyes flew open at the mention of the FBI. He hadn't been kidding when he said he was too young to go to prison back in the musty old apartment when they were still on the yearlong mission for the Eye. He was much, much too young. "I'm up, I'm up," he said as he sprung out of his bed, instantly grabbing the bedside table to steady himself. "Do we know where they are?"
"All that we know is that they're closing in in twenty minutes," Henley relayed quickly as she walked briskly out of his room to let him grab his essentials.
…
Dylan looked at the clock at the bottom of the computer screen he was looking at over some poor techies shoulder and masked his nervousness perfectly. Ten minutes. There was ten minutes before the inevitable shit storm.
He hoped the kids got out ok. He hadn't said it explicitly but he hoped that someone in the group was intelligent enough to know that if they were storming the place in thirty minutes it would have to mean they would surround the house in less the fifteen. Surely someone in that damned cabin would realize that, right?
…
"What's the plan?" Henley asked as the Four Horsemen gathered in the living room, packed and ready to disappear. They still had ten minutes. They could afford to plan something out more intricate than simply 'run'.
Jack fidgeted with the drawstring on his back – the only thing beside his leather jacket he had grabbed – and looked to Daniel. Daniel, carrying a black duffel with Atlas stenciled on it, glanced at Merritt and, in a flash of team cooperation, asked, "What do you think?"
"We won't be able to get the car," he answered matter-of-factly. He set his bag on the ground and walked over to the windows and peeked out the side of the tightly drawn curtains. His sharp eyes immediately picked up the changes in the forest behind the cabin. "They're already surrounding us."
"We need a distraction, then," Henley concluded, pulling her red hair into a ponytail and shoving it under a winter hat. If they had to run in the cold she figured she could sacrifice her hairdo this once for warmth. Besides, with her hair out of the way it was one less thing those agents could grab onto.
"What do you suggest, sweet pea?" Merritt asked. The Eye had assured them they couldn't be found here. They hadn't even prepared an escape plan.
"I think Jack should stay behind," Daniel said, knowing it would be an unpopular opinion but also knowing it was the right one.
He was right about the unpopularity, though, within milliseconds of the words coming out of his mouth Henley turned on him and growled, "Excuse me?"
"What?" Merritt asked, surprised as well at the suggestion.
"I mean –" Daniel began, only to be interrupted by Jack.
"That's actually a really good idea," he said. The advil hadn't quite kicked in yet but he could think straight enough to see where Daniel was going with this one. "Everyone still thinks I'm dead. It'll make them hesitate. That's all I need."
"No. Absolutely not," Henley said.
"We all know you're capable, Jack, but this is an entirely different situation," Merritt said, backing Henley up.
"I can do this guys," Jack reassured, "We don't really have time to argue about this anyways."
"We don't," Merritt agreed and looked over at Henley, unsure for once. "What are we supposed to do, then?"
"We go to Merritt's room," Daniel answered quickly. His brain was flying at a thousand miles a second, trying to find a foolproof way to get his team, his responsibility, his friends out of here safely. "His window faces the woods. Jack can distract them when they all come inside before they come upstairs. We jump out the window and meet up at the creek."
"And after?" Jack asked, completely unfazed he was staying to take care of the mess. "We need a ride and Dylan won't be able to get to us quickly enough."
With a bolt of inspiration Daniel pulled out his phone and said, "As soon as I reach the creek I'll call that SHIELD guy. If they can't help us we can just keep running until Dylan can get us. It's the best I can think of."
Merritt nodded, he still wasn't happy with leaving Jack behind to do the dirty work again but knew it was the most logical decision; the kid was the most experienced in that department.
Only Henley was still dissatisfied, "What is Jack supposed to do? Who knows how many men there are! What if he gets hurt?"
"Henley," Jack said grabbing her shoulders and looking her in the eye. "I won't have to take them all head on, I have my ways," he winked and handed her bag to her, "you have three minutes to get to Merritt's room. Give me three minutes and then I want you to jump out that window and start running. I'll meet up with you in another fifteen minutes. I promise. If anything happens I'll call."
"Jack," Henley whined. The other two Horsemen had already made their way upstairs, completely trusting the kid to take care of Henley's worries and to take care of himself.
"You have two minutes, Henley. I promise I'll be fine," he reassured her again, giving her a light push towards the stairs.
"Be careful, Jack," she said as she ran up the stairs.
…
"We head in in one minute, stand by," came the scratchy voice of the leader of the S.W.A.T. team leading the search of the house. "Do not shoot unless attacked."
Dylan briefly closed his eyes. Don't shoot unless attacked. Hopefully the Horsemen weren't planning on even letting the S.W.A.T. team see them at all let alone provoke them to violence.
"Thirty seconds, boys."
…
Jack sucked in a jittery breath. He wasn't quite nervous for the oncoming encounter, more excited and maybe a tad bit bitter. He knew that someone was going to get hurt in the coming fight. He just hoped no one would be killed. Jack had never killed someone before but had seen plenty of people die and knew all sorts of ways people died. He had used a gun before and, just like with his cards, had perfect aim. His plan was to acquire a gun through hand to hand combat from one of the first men in the house and incapacitate the rest of them before they caused too much trouble.
He knew they would be storming the house in a matter of seconds and stood right in the middle of the hall that connected the front door, the living room, the kitchen, the stairway to the second floor, and the back door. He figured men would come from both entrances and wanted to keep an eye on both to ensure none of them got upstairs.
Taking one more calming breath he picked up a paperweight that had been sitting on a small display table in the hall.
Jack waited and waited for what seemed like an eternity, when in reality it was just a few more seconds when both doors burst inward and men flowed into the room yelling things like "This is S.W.A.T."
"GET DOWN!"
"Take the living room!'
"Kitchen!"
When the first few men entered, though, the pandemonium stopped for a split second and Jack imagined that if he could see their eyes through their masks he would see shock, surprise, maybe even fear.
He took the second of stillness to throw the paperweight with accuracy and force towards the man closest to the stairway, hitting him in the neck just below the bullet proof helmet and visor combo, striking a good many nerves and blood vessels, dropping the man immediately. Immediately the men started scattering throughout the bottom floor of the cabin as Jack dove for the man that fell and wrenched the gun from his hand and crouching behind the half-wall on the stairway as bullets whizzed towards him, marking the walls and floor and making him wince as the noise made his headache worse.
Jack could tell by the pattern of the spray of bullets they weren't planning on actually shooting him – yet – and were just trying to scare him into surrendering. He couldn't do that. Not now, not when the team was depending on him.
He leaned the barest amount around the corner and gave off three shots making most of the men dive behind furniture and drop flat to the floor, unsure where he might be shooting and if he might be trying to shoot for their vitals. Jack breathed a sigh of relief when he saw three men drop their guns and curse or cry out as their hands started bleeding all over the floor from where they had been shot. Jack figured this was the best route to head down: if they were shot in the hands they couldn't shoot him and couldn't punch or grab him. Hopefully this would be enough to deter them.
"Shoot him!" he heard a man yell as he ducked behind the wall again. He heard the pain in the voice and realized it must have been someone he shot. The command in the voice told him it was also the person in charge. He breathed in again, waiting for another pause in the bullets to take a few more men down. The rest of the team should be out of the cabin by now.
Dylan
"Shoot him!" came the pain filled voice of the commander of the strike team. Dylan winced internally. "Him" could only be one person and he really, really wished they hadn't left the kid behind again. He knew firsthand what the kid could do but this was pushing the limits.
Be safe, kid, he thought as the sounds of the firefight came screeching through the speaker once again.
The Other Three Horsemen
Daniel ran as fast as his legs could carry him and kept his eyes forward and on Henley. He insisted she run in front of him – he didn't want her slowing down or turning around for the kid. After the shots started ringing out he had almost had to physically restrain her from running back to the cabin but instead managed to convince her that there really wasn't anything she could do and that if there were still shots being fired it meant the kid was still alive and kicking.
After the first volley of shots tapered off Daniel saw not only Henley, but Merritt as well, stumble in fear. No sooner had the fear arisen then five more shots pierce the cold day that was slowly turning to night. This cycle continued a few more times and Daniel couldn't help but wonder where Jack had learned to fight like he did.
Jack
There were only two more men in the cabin left without bullets in their hands but Jack couldn't see them and instead risked running over to the man he had deduced was in charge here and dragged the man into a sitting position against a wall, closing a tight fist over his microphone that he knew connected to the vans further down the driveway where more FBI waited. He didn't want more people running into the house and was going to try something risky in order to stop it.
"You son of a bitch!" the commander moaned as he cradled his hands to his chest.
"You son of a bitch!" Jack mimicked. It was the same trick he used on Dylan back in the apartment and knew that Dylan might recognize it as him but no one else would. If a trick isn't broken don't fix it he figured.
"What the hell?" the man gasped, glaring at Jack.
"What the hell?" Jack parroted. He then punched the commander square in the face, hard enough to knock him out cold and grabbed the microphone, "It's all taken care of. We've got them."
He knew the rest of the men in the vans outside would start getting suspicious in seconds after he stopped responding but figured this would give him at least one – maybe two minutes to follow his fellow Horsemen into the woods.
Jack jumped up and glanced around at the men and took off towards the back door, closest to the woods. He wrenched another gun from a downed man to replace the one he had dropped, just in case, and sprinted towards the back door – completely forgetting about the other two men.
Jack wrenched open the door and took his first step to safety when a sharp crack of a gunshot quickly reminded him of the men he had so irresponsibly forgotten.
The other three Horsemen
They were almost to the creek and the shots from the cabin had quieted down and stopped altogether and Daniel refused to think anything but that Jack was on his way. When a final shot rang through the air and a shiver ran up Daniel's back he screeched to a stop and Henley turned as well, eyes wide.
Daniel shivered again. The kid can take care of himself. The kid can take care of himself, he chanted to himself and then said aloud, "Keep going."
Henley looked just about ready to kill Daniel but nodded: the kid had promised her that he would be ok. He had promised.
WAAAAAAAHHHHHH! CLIFFIEEE!
So this chapter goes out to the lovely Miss Emeralds because she will not have access to this story for a few weeks and asked I pump out an extra chapter real quick and who am I to deny her such a thing?
A special thanks goes to katewolf2000 for favoriting this story! Thanks girl!
MEEVA E: OOOOOHHHH! I'm so excited to read your story! You have no idea! You'll probably be marvelous, my dear! Thanks again for your continued support and reviewing! I know it means a lot to me!
Meow: Of course I'll continue! ;) and I'm thinking of having them kiss just not yet… And I was super disappointed too!
Goodbye my dear internet friends